Why Paul and Christie went to war

Over the past week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took the GOP’s intraparty bickering to a new level, openly savaging each other on issues of national security, privacy and government spending. When Christie wasn’t challenging Paul to explain himself to the families of Sept. 11 victims, Paul was accusing Christie of demanding federal handouts for hurricane relief and, in an obvious double entendre, labeling the Garden Stater the “ king of bacon.”

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Both men stepped back from the brink of nuclear-level confrontation on Wednesday, as Paul told a New Hampshire radio station that while Christie started the fight, he’d be glad to “ratchet it down.” Christie dismissed Paul’s barbs as “juvenile” in his own radio appearance.

But the battle lines between the two men have been drawn in a more lasting way. More than anything else, what the firefight revealed was the extent to which Paul and Christie — two pols who have thrived on the appeal of their raw authenticity — have placed drastically different bets on the future of the Republican Party. And as they approach the start of the long 2016 campaign, both men are so deeply confident that they have the political and ideological high ground, that each can scarcely understand how his adversary could be making such an epic miscalculation.

In some respects, the Christie-Paul blowup is a case study in the Republican Party’s internal divisions: The two men hail from such different wings of the GOP, and both are so nationally ambitious, that there is little short-term risk in escalating their rivalry.

A Pew survey published Thursday showed that Paul and Christie currently draw their support from starkly different constituencies. Paul’s strongest support comes from self-identifying tea party Republicans, 70 percent of whom said they view him favorably. Among other Republicans, Paul’s favorability rating was 43 percent. For Christie, those numbers were closer to even: Forty-seven percent of tea partiers viewed him favorably (while 35 percent said the opposite) and 48 percent of other Republicans said they had a positive impression of him.

Advisers to both Paul and Christie say that neither man was seeking out a total-war confrontation. As the Paul camp sees it, it was responding to an unprovoked attack from Christie: The popular governor tore into the libertarian wing of the party, including Paul, at a Republican Governors Association event last Thursday, for what he called their impractical and “esoteric” views on national security.

According to Christie-world, that cannon blast wasn’t intended to be the start of a drawn-out fight. That’s just the way the famously flamboyant Christie operates, they say; he was answering a question, and he always turns things up to 11.

But both men also have short- and long-term political incentives to fight so furiously. For Christie, being perceived as the straight-talking champion of Sept. 11 families, taking on a clueless Washington GOP, can be only a positive in his 2013 reelection campaign.

Over the long haul, any Christie presidential campaign would want to be perceived as tough on defense, a traditional weak point for governors seeking the Oval Office, though several Republicans in Christie’s orbit strenuously played down the notion that his jabs at the Paul cohort were part of a deliberate 2016 strategy.

Paul, meanwhile, knows he must clear the commander-in-chief test as he crafts himself into a national candidate. The libertarian-leaning senator was attacked in his first campaign – back in 2010 – as a national security squish whose devotion to civil liberties was at odds with fighting terrorism.

Three years later, Paul has grown more confident not only that he’s on the right side of the issue, but that substantively the politics have moved in his favor. Paul’s celebrated anti-drone filibuster was Exhibit A on that count.

Doug Stafford, a senior adviser to the senator, said that Paul’s spat with Christie should be viewed in the context of a national conservative advocate giving no quarter to a familiar set of critics.

“Rand is out there saying, ‘We can have a strong defense, a robust national security policy and keep our respect for rights at the same time.’ It’s the same message he’s been talking about for several years now,” Stafford said. “And I don’t think it’s risky, I think more and more people are agreeing with it.”

Another Paul adviser shared internal polling from the 2010 campaign showing that it was Paul’s showdown with his GOP primary opponent, Trey Grayson, over national security that propelled the insurgent to a 13-percentage-point lead over the establishment-backed Grayson (Paul eventually won the primary by 23 points.)